Geoffrey R. Stone writes in the Huffington Post about campus sexual assault and argues for a more thoughtful approach from universities “to keep their students safe and to ensure that they can live and learn in an environment free from sexual violence.”

At The Week, Andrew Cohen considers the lessons of Georgia’s recent decision to execute a developmentally disabled man.

In The Atlantic, Kent Greenfield asserts that corporations should shoulder greater responsibilities if they are to be considered people under the law.

Cristian Farias argues in The New Republicthat Justice Scalia could be the decisive vote on the Affordable Care Act.

In Slate, Jamelle Bouie contends that public apathy has led to significant criminal justice reform, but larger support is needed to tackle the biggest problems.

Between 2011 and 2013, politicians in 30 states enacted 205 abortion restrictions, ranging from outright and unconstitutional abortion bans to laws intended to make it impossible for providers to offer abortion. Last year alone, fifteen states adopted 26 new restrictions that limit or impede access to abortion, making it harder and sometimes impossible for women to exercise their constitutionally protected right to abortion. This wave of anti-abortion activity has dramatically changed the country’s landscape for women seeking an abortion. According to the Guttmacher Institute, in 2013, more than half the states had at least four abortion restrictions in effect

These multiple restrictions compound and, for many women, make it impossible to obtain an abortion. In Texas, for example, a woman seeking a medication abortion has to make four separate trips to the provider because of the restrictive laws that exist in that state. She is forced to undergo and view an ultrasound, listen to a description of the fetus' development, wait 24 hours, and then has to make two trips for medication abortion because Texas forces providers to use an outdated protocol rather than following current evidence-based medical practice. And this is if she can actually reach a provider - one out of six women in Texas will have to travel 150 miles or more to reach an abortion provider.

These laws impose unnecessary monetary costs. These costs are particularly devastating to low-income and poor women who already face significant barriers accessing care. The cost of the abortion itself can be prohibitive, especially when politicians force women to pay out of pocket by prohibiting insurance coverage of abortion. Then, women must arrange for and receive time off work, most likely without pay. They might have to pay for childcare, find a place to stay or make multiple roundtrips to distant clinics, and/or find reliable transportation. As one provider aptly noted, “[T]he vast majority of women can’t add those travel costs to the cost of an abortion or they can’t take off work.” These restrictions chip away at women’s right to abortion by creating so many barriers that abortion becomes unobtainable.

Five years after the Supreme Court in Citizens United struck down restrictions on corporate spending in elections, the American political landscape has become one where influence can be bought and the voices of wealthy donors drown out other perspectives.

Almost immediately after the Citizens United decision, outside spending in elections spiked. Over the next five years, it more than doubled. Super PACs used hefty budgets to produce attack ads against candidates who were not to their liking—affecting outcomes in not only political races, but also in state judicial elections.

Judges perceived as being unfriendly to PACs’ interests were attacked under the pretense of being “soft on crime,” resulting in measurably harsher treatment of criminal defendants by state supreme court justices. Further, the last five years have seen a flood of dark money into elections. As many commentators have noted, donor secrecy breeds mistrust and, possibly, corruption.

Americans expect the courts to be fair and impartial, but as special interest groups spend more and more money to influence courts, public faith in these institutions is waning. Soon, the Supreme Court will have to decide how important judicial independence is to our justice system in Williams-Yulee vs. The Florida Bar, a case that could, if wrongly decided, further diminish public trust in the courts. For those concerned about Citizens United, Williams-Yulee, or the corrosive impact of unrestrained special interest spending on our democracy, see the following ACS resources: